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Written by Stevie Nicks, "Silver Springs" was originally intended for the album Rumours. Years after the fact, Nicks commented that the song's exclusion from the album marked a growing tension in the band. The track's content reportedly came from the ending of the romantic relationship between Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.[1] She has said,

I wrote "Silver Springs" about Lindsey. And we were in Maryland somewhere driving under a freeway sign that said Silver Spring, Maryland. And I loved the name … Silver Springs sounded like a pretty fabulous place to me. And, 'You could be my silver springs…', that's just a whole symbolic thing of what you could have been to me.[2]

In face of the limited space available on the LP format of the time, the song was excluded due to its length. In a 1997 documentary on the making of Rumours, Richard Dashut, the engineer and co-producer, called it "The best song that never made it to a record album."[3] The song was, however, released as the B-side of the "Go Your Own Way" single, the Buckingham song to which it is regarded as being a response.

Years later, the band went on a world tour to promote the Fleetwood Mac album Behind The Mask. After the tour concluded, Nicks left the group over a dispute with Mick Fleetwood, who would not allow her to release the track "Silver Springs" on her album Timespace – The Best of Stevie Nicks, because of his plans to release it on a forthcoming Fleetwood Mac box set.[4] The song eventually appeared on the 1992 box set 25 Years – The Chain.